


The Good And Evil Within Us Both

by fellow_sinner



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 19:08:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18016679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fellow_sinner/pseuds/fellow_sinner
Summary: One family fights itself during the first wizarding war against Lord Voldemort. Two sisters clash as they fight different sides of the same war and began to start their own families. Two roads. Two sisters. One family.





	The Good And Evil Within Us Both

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting here so pls be gentle. I've been working on the draft for this one for years but I posted the first chapter to Quotev 3 months ago and no one has read it still so I'd thought I'd try my luck here. I do plan for this to be outrageously long and spanning many generations so I'll be adding tags and ships as we go.  
> I love constructive criticism so feel free to tear me apart. :)

That night as everyone readied themselves for bed, the usual routine of bathing, brushing and undressing, the air inside the small country home seemed tense. The children stayed quiet, anticipating a sudden fight to break out between their father and their older sister, Genevieve. The pair had been fighting for years. The arguments ranged from the school she had gone to, to the boy she had married. However, the reasons for their constant clashing as of late had been the newest addition to Hale household, Genevieve's baby boy, Salazar. Their father, Amos, was less than happy about his eighteen-year-old daughter having a child, especially since he did not approve of the child's father with whom she had eloped. Tom Riddle, like Genevieve, had magical abilities. They lived in a beautiful world of witches and wizards, hidden just beneath the surface of ordinary, unmagical life, hidden in plain sight but never found. Non-magic folk to them were known as muggles, some even thought themselves better than the unmagical lot, and Tom and Genevieve were part of those people. Amos, however, detested the magical kind from the first time he found out they existed.  
It was when little eleven-year-old Gen received her acceptance letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She had been sitting in the drawing room floor, coloring with her older sister Delphi, when an owl swooped in their open window to deliver earth-shattering news. The two sisters had always made a fine pair, hardly ever did they bicker or fight or pull each other's hair, they had grown a bond of deepest friendship. Delphi had never been the kind of older sister to boss or tease or manipulate, rather in a house full of her father's shouting voice and banging fists she became a small mother figure to her younger siblings. Often times Delphi wished she had been born a boy so she had grown into a strong fighter's body that could challenge her father, instead of the fragile, willowy build she had been dealt. Delphi was quiet and kind, blending into the shadows when trouble brewed, only to emerge after the dust had settled and comfort and mend to the bruised and broken, much like her mother sometimes did when the storm was not directed at her, however, this talent had its flaw of survivor's guilt. Delphi had always wished to find a way or develop some skill that could save her family from her father's wrath, sadly she never could hide the others in her shadows of safety, their father always found a reason to direct his anger at the three youngest children and their fragile, broken mother.  
Genevieve, on the other hand, had finally gained the power to stop him, magic. She could merely raise her wooden stick of a wand and make her father retreat like a wounded dog, and she relished in her glory. Never had she felt more satisfaction than when she had power over her father. She would hold this power over his head like a weight hanging on a string, it's fall would be fatal to a powerless muggle like Amos. No fist or gun could challenge the deadly power of a skillful witch like Genevieve and Amos knew it, mere stories were enough to school the angry father of the lethal magic witches and wizards wielded. Amos would always have the last laugh, however, whenever Genevieve would wave her wand angrily about with the threat to kill him he would scoff and claim she could never have the guts to kill him, her own father. He let her know he had no fear of a small and spineless little girl such as his daughter. Gen would become even more enraged with the stabs at her will, only to have quiet and kind Delphi melt from the shadows and take Genevieve away from the barking laughs of their father, Amos not being foolish enough to go after them. Such events had been occurring often since Genevieve had given birth to baby Salazar, only a few short months old and the child had heard more shrieking than if he lived in a family of banshees.  
The trigger everyone had been waiting for finally happened when Genevieve used her wand to instantly dry her damp hair. Her proud smile faltered when her father, who had been walking by the open bathroom door, began berating her for the disgusting display of lazy magic. Gen, now red in the face from anger, spun on her father, her wand raised over the hunched figure of her youngest sibling, Alec, who had been rinsing out his toothpaste filled mouth at the sink. With the threat of an attack pointing itself at Amos's heart, the two began their usual speeches, each including strings of obscenities and cries of how both had failed the other, as a parent and as a child. Delphi sighed, stored her toothbrush away in the medicine cabinet and placed her hands on her younger sister's shoulders. There was silence for a few tense moments. Evangeline, the second to youngest, was pressed against the wall, still being right in the cluster inside the tiny bathroom. Delphi met the younger girl's scared eyes and squeezed Genevieve's shoulders in a calming gesture.

"Come now, Gen, spare us of this tonight," Delphi whispered in the quite. Slowly and while glaring daggers at her father, Genevieve lowered her weapon. Alec, now freed from his terrified state, ducked under his father's hulking figure and raced down the hallway to his shared bedroom. Evangeline soon gathered her wit and scurried after him. All the while Amos was shouting after Alec, voicing his shame of having such wuss for a son, his only son at that.  
"You leave him alone!" shrieked Genevieve. Delphi clutched onto the hand holding her sister's wand, keeping it locked at her side. "I will not be told what to do by the likes of you, devil's child! This is my family! I'll treat them however I please!" Amos barked at his failure of a daughter.  
"Not as long as I protect them, you devil!"  
"Gen, stop this.", Came another whispered plea from Delphi. Genevieve turned to look at the begging face of her older sister. Gen stared into those light mossy green hues, dull with a tiredness of the soul and shadows lined the skin beneath, Delphi's Shadows of Safety, her only magic power.  
"Alright, Del." She looped her arm through her sister's and began walking them towards the door. She glared daggers at her father as they passed. Del led them to her sister's bedroom, easing Gen down into her rocking chair.

"You can't fight with him like that all the time, think of the baby if nothing else, it can't be well for him to be raised like this, all this yelling." Delphi tried to be the voice of reason in moments like this.  
"It isn't good for him, to be raised around his hulking brute of a grandfather! The man won't even let the boy's father near him! How will that be good for Salazar when he's older, huh? And what of him keeping me locked in this house day and night? I'm not a child anymore, and he won't even call me his own so why does he feel the need to keep me close any longer? Is it to torture me?" Genevieve cried. Del hushed her and began to run a brush through her hair. Gently she brushed her sister's hair till it shined and Gen began to relax into the chair.  
Quite filled the small farmhouse, only Delphi's faint humming resonated from the eerie silents. As Gen's eyes began to droop, little Salazar started to whine from his crib. His mother sighed and moved to rise from her chair but Delphi was there to push her back down.  
"I'll take care of it, Genny, you relax."  
She crossed the room to the baby's crib, the wooden floorboards creaking beneath her. Gently she gathered little Sal into her arms, cooing at the crying child.  
"It's alright, Sally, Auntie Del's got you. You need a change, don't ya?"  
She walked him carefully over to the changing table and laid him down, shushing him softly as he whined from being removed from her soft embrace. Humming as she went, switching his diapers and cleaning him up.  
"There, now you smell fresh as a daisy!" She spun them around, holding him high in the air as her nightgown swelled from beneath her. The baby giggled in her arms, the sound making Gen smile, but it was tainted with sadness that was hiding behind her eyes. She let out a low sigh, leaning back and taking in her sister and son. Del held the child, swaying back and forth as she sang softly.

"I'll never smile again, until I smile at you," Del's voice carried gently around the room, soothing both Sal and his mother. "I'll never laugh again, what good would it do?" She rocked the baby in her arms, singing and humming and as she glided across the wood floor on her old wool socks. Her black hair fell from her loose braid, falling gently upon Sal's equally dark tuffs of hair. As she sung on Sal's eyes drooped, yawning as he rests his head onto Delphi's warm breast, making a little noise of contentment.

"Within my heart I know I will never start to smile again until I smile at yooooou...." She carried out the last note in a soft voice as she nestled the now sleeping baby down in his crib, laying a kiss on his silky black hair and tucking the blankets around his tiny waist before she stood back to look at him. He was truly just as beautiful as his parents, but she reckoned he looked a lot more like herself. Perhaps it was the green eyes that she knew shown under his sleeping lids, but she thought he looked much more like a Hale than his father, but she would never say a thing like that to Genevieve. She turned to glace at her sister and saw she was sleeping just as soundly as Sal was.

Del gave a quiet laugh and smiled fondly. She went to shake her awake but she looked so peaceful she couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, she put her feet up to rest and looked around for a spare blanket to put over her. She spotted the old red, misshapen one she had made for Gen years and years ago for her first Christmas away at Hogwarts. Seeing it made her smile, it was the first blanket she ever made by herself and it was a hideous thing, to say the least, the yarn was given to her by her late grandmother as payment for doing chores around her old ranch house, and was the color of dried blood. It was hardly blanket shaped at all, a result of her thirteen-year-old self's inexperience, but Gen swore up and down she loved it to bits. It sat behind the door atop a bunch of boxes but when Delphi had lifted it up she realized they weren't boxes but suitcases, a whole stack of them. She turned to see if Gen was still sleeping, watching her snoozing figure for a few moments until she was sure she wouldn't wake before pulling the largest of the suitcases out. She knelt down before it and snapped it open, lifting the lid to peek inside, revealing piles of Gen's clothing and shoes, her "Muggle" passport, Sal's birth certificate and many other important things. As she was rifling through the papers she heard the rocking chair behind creak loudly. Her head snapped to see Gen looking down at her with sadness in her eyes.

"Gen...I hadn't meant to snoop...I had only...the blanket...then I saw..." Her broken sentence trailed off and she sat stunned and silent like she couldn't wrap her head around the truth of what she discovered.

"Del," Genevieve whispered.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Gen shrunk in her seat, guilt covering her face.

"I had meant to tell you sooner..."

"When?"

"As soon as we'd planned it but-"

"No," Del snapped, her anger starting to bleed through. "When were you going to abandon us?"

Gen grimaced at her sister's harsh words. "Deli, please, you know I hadn't planned to even stay the extra year if it wasn't for that man locking me up in this house-"

"No! You stayed for us! If you wanted to leave that badly you could have, but you stayed to keep us safe, I know you did. And now you plan to leave without so much as a word! You know what he'll do once he sees you've run off, he'd beat everyone in this house to a bloody pulp, you know he would!" She shouted as loud as she dared, in fear of waking the very man she spoke of.

"Then leave." Gen spat out, rising from her rocker with a look of rage. "Why don't you grown a damned backbone and leave already!" Her eyes looked wild as she raged on, marching closer to stand nose to nose with her sister.

"Why don't you stop lying around at that man's feet like a dog ready to get kicked? You take it just like a bitch, just like our mother." She was seething now, spitting out the words "bitch" and "mother" like they shared the same taste of venom on her tongue.

"Gen..." she whispered, tears shining in her eyes. Sal had begun to cry and when Delphi had made a move to go to the boy Genevieve had stopped her.

"No, I won't have a filthy Squib like you touch him any longer."

Del choked at the words spilling from her sister's mouth. The very word of "Squib" didn't hurt, she never minded not being gifted like her siblings because unlike so many others she knew of the world of magic, got see things others couldn't, and that meant just as much to her as being a witch. No, what hurt was that Genevieve had meant it to hurt, and that had held more sting than any single word could.

"Genny. . ." Del sobbed out, tears now spilling freely from her dull green eyes. Genevieve, now holding Sal, kept her back to her sister for a long, weighted moment before breaking the crushing silence.

"Go, and if you're smart you'll keep out of the house tomorrow, I won't stay here another day." Her voice was calming then, almost warning off from her own volatile behavior. Delphi squared her shoulders and let out a shaky breath.

"Is this what he has made of you?" she asked. Gen scoffed.

"That man did a lot to me but not this, now I'm so much stronger now, stronger than him, stronger than all of you. Even Eve and Alec lack the strength I have, you've turned them into useless rag dolls, you and mother, they forget they have power, real power." She turned to look at her sister then, face as steely as her words.

"No, you were never like this, not until you started hanging around him." 

Gen frowned at that, shifting Salazar in her arms. "And what, exactly, is it that Tom has turned me into, Delphi?"

"A monster," she whispered. "The way you talk of you're own kin...even of papa, at first I thought it was empty threats and tasteless jokes but. . ." she trailed off as if she couldn't get those horrible words out.

"But what, Delphi?"

"You really want to kill him don't you?" she whispered, her words so soft Gen almost didn't hear her.

"Of course I do! He is the true monster, Delphi, not me!" she shrieked. Sal whined in her arms, squirming out till Genevieve had to put him back in his crib. Del shook her head in disbelief.

"The words you speak, Genevieve, they're ungodly."

Gen gave a cruel laugh as she sneered at her own flesh and blood. "And does God not know hate? Does God not send his chosen to smite those evil doers who hurt his own? God has given me the power and the hate necessary to do this job. The job to rid the world of men such as our father! The man who beats his family and only shares a pew with you for a chance to steal from the donation basket for booze money!"

"You've gone mad! You are not chosen by God!" Del shouted. Salazar cried away in his crib, his mother now toe to toe with his aunt. Gen was fuming, her bright blue eyes alight with hatred.

"And why am I not?" she shrieked. Delphi pursed her lips and spoke in the steadiest voice she could.

"Because you are evil."

 

The sickening crack that let out as hand met cheek stunned the crying baby into silence as he watched the scene before him, little chubby hands trying to pull himself up by the metal railing of the crib. Delphi stood in shock, the stinging red handprint on her skin growing angrier as the moments dragged on. Gen held out a shaky hand to touch her sister's wounded cheek as if to see if it had really happened. Delphi jerked away from the now stranger before her, shaking her head in disbelief once again that night.

"Deli, wait please, I hadn't meant it, any of it, not the words, not the-"

"No," Del spat out, teeth gritted as spoke the quiet word that shook the room. "You speak nothing but hate for him but you are his spitting image. I may share his features but you share that same cold, black, hateful heart." The words flowed out of her like poisoned wine and Gen dared not meet her eyes, filled with fire and colors of moss, like a burning forest from which salty tears poured out of.

"I fear far more for Sal than I ever have for any of us, the horror it must be to be a child of not just one but two earthbound devils." And with that Delphi stormed from the room, only hearing a strangled, "Deli" being called after her. She made her way into her room she shared with her youngest siblings, a move she had made to make more space for the new baby. Evangeline and Alec sprung up from where they had been whispering on the cold wood floor and ran into their adjoining beds, staring on at their eldest sister as she slowly moved to untie her braid and crawl into her tiny cot that was smashed into the end of the little narrow room.

"Deli," Evangeline began and in the light of Delphi's bedside lamp, she gasped at what she saw. "That mark . . . it wasn't papa . . ." she said in a panicked whisper. It wasn't a question, it was far to small a print to be their father's and they had known just where she had just been.

"Don't let it bother you, it's getting late and I want us all up before dawn to head down to creak before father wakes. I'll pack us a picnic so we can spend the whole day there." she mused, but her siblings were not done.

"Why would she hit you?" Alec whispered, alarmed. Del let out a sigh and fought down the next wave of tears that stung in her eyes, she had to be strong for them.

"It doesn't matter, she'll be leaving for good tomorrow and I won't have us here for that disaster. Now, go to sleep." she ordered. The teenagers complied, laying down in their beds as Del turned out the last light and laid down as well. It was quiet for a long while but no one was sleeping, the air in the room was heavy and tense until Alec's gentle voice broke the silence.

"Deli, can you sing for us?" he asked. Delphi smiled in the darkness and racked her brain on what to sing till, finally, she found the words of an old song by Ruth Etting that her mother once taught her.

"I'll get by as long as I have you, though there be rain and darkness too, I'll not complain, I'll see it through." The teenagers seemed to sink into their beds with blissful sighs as Deli's pretty singing voice filled the air. She sang on and on till the smiling faces of the teenagers started to droop with signs of sleep.

"Poverty may come to me, it's true, but what care I, say, I'll get by, as long as I have yooooou." As the final note faded off the kids were fast asleep. Eve even let out a little snore but Delphi laid awake, the sting in her cheek nearly gone, but not the one in her heart. It was hours before she could nod off to sleep and it seemed just as soon as she shut her eyes did she feel the gentle shake of Alec waking her.

 

The rays of dawn had not yet lit the sky but Del and her surrogate children made a hurry to get ready, washing faces, brushing teeth and changing clothes as quietly as they could. They made their way out the door with a picnic basket, packed with as much food as they dared take, just as the sun started to make its journey into the sky. They walked into the woods, feeling like they could finally breathe freely for the first time in months. The teenagers ran the rest of the way to the creak, giggling and leaping over fallen branches. Del smiled brightly as she watched her young siblings do the same. 

Once arrived at the creak Delphi rested upon the handmade quilt she had laid beneath an old oak tree nearby. She leaned against the mossy trunk, a deep sigh escaping her lips. Her gaze fell upon her young siblings who ran through the trees, shouting and laughing as they went. Alec had turned fifteen less than a week prior and that coming September he would start his fifth year of that magic school they went to. Evangeline was a year ahead of him, though no one would think so by the look of them, Alec being so tall and lanky and Eve being so small and petite. For siblings so close you couldn't find a pair more different, Eve and her thick brown curls and green eyes and Alec's wispy blond locks and pale blue orbs. He was a good foot taller and all arms and legs while Eve was short and all pretty curves. The differences didn't stop at looks, Eve had always been a social and chatty girl while Alec was shy and timid. 

It had surprised even Deli when they told her they had been sorted into the same house, Gryffindor. From what the told her of Hogwarts she had thought Alec would be in a house like Hufflepuff. Alec had gone red when she told him such, saying no wanted to be a Hufflepuff. Alec had recalled the moment as the first time Delphi had ever looked annoyed when she shot back at him with,

"What is wrong with wanting to be kind above all?" It was then the three other siblings had started to call Del "their secret Hufflepuff", a title Del cherished, saying, "The world needs more Hufflepuffs." 

 

As Delphi sat under the tree and reminisced of days of old those left in the Hale family house began to start the day.

A day to remember it would be. A loud crack on the porch caused for their mother, Clara, to paused her work for breakfast, whipping her flour-covered hands along her old faded, blue apron. Peeking her head out the screen-door would be her first mistake as she felt the rounded tip of a wand dig into the side of her neck.

"Don't move unless I tell you to." She was greeted by the smug face of a young Tom Riddle, the boy her daughter had eloped with nearly a year prior. She said not a word as she stared and he dug his wand deeper into her skin, causing her to back into the kitchen. Another crack, like the sound of a whip striking air, sounded through the old country home again. Clara spun despite the threats from her attacker and saw before her the giddy face of her daughter, pointing her wand right above her mother's beating heart.

"Go get Salazar, I can handle her. Amos is already stunned so be a dear and bring him down with you, Tom." She smiled with glee as he walked passed her up the stairs. "I wanted you to see when I do it," she whispered to her mother. Clara's face was that of dark realization as she looked on at her own daughter with tears welling in the same blue eyes that she passed on to Genevieve.

"My little girl. . . How could you do such a thing?" Her mother's broken cries did nothing to soften Gen it seemed as she sneered at her.

"You're even duller than I thought if you can't see why."

"I thought I raised you to forgive, to turn the other cheek. Did I fail so horribly with you, Genny?" she whispered sadly. Gen's face was red with anger then, her fingers turning white from the grip she had on her wand. "You failed to make me just as weak as you and today I'll finally stop you from doing the same to my sisters and brother." Genevieve sneered at her mother, her eyes alight with hatred.

"You had power once, you were a witch and you threw it away, you threw your wand away, for what? To be a battered housewife to a pig? You make me sick."

 

Just then Tom emerged from his errands, his son in his arms and his father-in-law floating behind him, banging his head on the walls and doorways as he glided through the air. Clara let out a sob as her husband fell at her feet with a bang. Gen lifted her wand to dig in under her mother's chin.

"Do you cry for him, even now?" she spat. Clara shook her head, blonde waves dancing around her shoulders.

"No, I cry for your soul, Genny."

"Well don't, my soul will be light as a feather when I leave here."

She waved her wand and her father began to sit up. If looks could kill than perhaps Amos would be evenly matched with his daughter's magic. "You Satanic bitch!" he shouted in rage. He opened his mouth to say something more but Genevieve did not give him the time.

"Crucio!"

Amos began writhing and screaming, his face a mask of agony.

"Crucio!"

His screams when silent, mouth gaping as tears streamed down his reddened face, the veins in his neck bulging as the torture went on. When it finally stopped he lay gasping for air and his wife stood crying, feet stuck to the floor by Tom's magic. Genevieve looked crazed, her wide, evil grin looked like that of a maniac. Amos dropped his head to the cool wooden floor, sweat now coating his body. He gave his daughter one last hateful look.

"Do it then," he spat.

The devil seem to look through Gen's eyes as she addressed him without the smallest hint of regret. She raised her wand.

"Avada Kedavra," she whispered. The room was covered in bright green light and when it passed Amos lay dead on the floor. She then turned to her mother, who was at this point hysterical.

"My baby, what have you done?" Another wave of sobs took her as Gen laid her wand over her mother's heart.

"I've paid a debt long overdue, and now we finish this."

Clara's hands clasped together in prayer as her body shook with terror.

"Lord, forgive her."

The sentiment made Genevieve pause. To pray for one's killer at the hour of their death, was it brave or foolish to do so? Gen knew her answer. "No, mother, we are done forgiving."

"Avada Kedavra," With one last blast of green light her mother crumpled to the ground like she had a hundred times before only this time never to rise again.

 

Gen stared a the bodies for a long moment before she felt her husband's hand lay on her shoulder.

"Genevieve," he whispered. She turned to him with a smile and took her baby in her arms. She looked down at the tear-streaked face of her child, she had not even heard his cries as she had taken her vengeance. She kissed his plump little cheeks and rocked him in her arms. Her gaze went back to her husband and he gave her his own sick grin.

"Take us away now, Tom." He complied as he took her into his arms and with one last crack they vanished, leaving the bodies for Delphi to find hours later.


End file.
